new Delhi: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Friday moved a Private Members’ Bill to repeal the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act in the Lok Sabha. According to reports, Tharoor moved the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Repeal Bill, 2022 to repeal the UAPA.
Speaking to reporters outside Parliament, the Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram said that the idea of bringing in Private Members’ Bill is an act that will repeal the UAPA.
The act has become an instrument of abuse for a state where 66 per cent of the arrests do not involve any form of violence. The conviction rate is only 2.4 per cent,” news agency ANI quoted Tharoor as saying.
Tharoor also took to his Twitter account and said: “Today I introduced a Private Member’s Bill to repeal the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. It is a tool of abuse with no violence in 66% of cases, 56% are detained. There are no chargesheets for two years, and the conviction rate is a meager 2.4% since 2014. A blot on our democracy.”
Today I introduced a Private Member’s Bill to repeal the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. It is a tool of abuse that involves no violence in 66% of cases, 56% in custody for two years without a charge-sheet, and a conviction rate of 2.4% since 2014. A blot on our democracy.
Shashi Tharoor (Hashshi Tharoor) 1 April 2022
Besides this, the Congress leader also emphasized that the law should be scrapped.
UAPA must deal with real criminals and terrorists, but we cannot have a blanket law that considers crime, Tharoor said adding that UAPA passed by the Center loosely defines conspiracy, arrests people left and right , does not accuse them and then discovers that they must do so not to be convicted.
I introduced a bill today to protect India’s traditional knowledge. It will recognize the rights of those who hold and generate traditional knowledge, create a national authority to support them and act against abuse by others. I urge the Government of India to take my Bill into its own hands and enact it.
Shashi Tharoor (Hashshi Tharoor) 1 April 2022
The bill states that following the 2019 amendment to the UAPA, the state now commands the power to designate individuals as ‘terrorists’, which was earlier limited to designating groups as ‘terrorist organisations’.
According to the Bill, the Act also allows search, seizure and arrest on the basis of ‘personal information’ of the police without written verification from any superior judicial authority.
UAPA is the primary anti-terrorism law in India which was originally enacted in 1967 by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. However, the terror law came under severe scrutiny after the Modi government made more than half a dozen amendments to the law.
The updated UAPA restricts the right to bail and relies on police documents to convince the court of an accused’s guilt.
Tharoor has been a staunch critic of UAPA on several occasions. In December last year, he claimed that the BJP government in Uttar Pradesh was imposing sedition and UAPA cases on the people because its leadership suffers from allodoxaphobia – an irrational fear of opinion.
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The Congress leader was among eminent personalities to condemn the “shameless misuse” of the UAPA imposed against several people, including Jharkhand-based activist and priest Stan Swamy, in connection with the 2018 Bhima-Koregaon violence.
Tharoor and other participants had alleged that the UAPA was being used to silence voices who believed in democracy and secularism, adding that India’s secular fabric was under threat from the BJP-RSS.
Even the Supreme Court of India had asked the central government whether the country still needed such a law.